Water covers approximately 70 percent of the Earth's surface, but less than 1 percent of that water is available for human use. The world must share this small amount of usable water for agricultural, domestic, commercial, industrial, and environmental needs. Due to the small amount of water that is available for human use, water resources need to be conserved.
Water conservation may be defined as the policies, strategies and activities to preserve fresh water as a sustainable resource, to protect the water environment from pollutants, and to meet current and future human demand. Due to growing populations, increased water demands, as well as drought conditions in many areas of the world, water conservation is becoming more and more critical. Just in the U.S., over the last 50 years, the population has doubled in size. However, the demand for water over this same time period has tripled. It was recorded that at least 36 states have had at least a local, regional, or statewide water shortage, some coming even under non-drought conditions.
One way to conserve water may be to lessen the amount of water lost from open water sources due to evaporation. The amount of evaporated water from open water sources may depend on the temperature in the water and in the air, and the humidity and velocity of the air above the surface. The hotter the temperature, the drier the air and the winder the conditions, the larger the amount of water that may be lost due to evaporation. Management of water by reducing the evaporation rates may aid in the amount of water that may be used to help support the ever growing domestic, agricultural, and industrial demands.
It would thus be desirable to provide a system and method that may reduce the amount of water that evaporates from open water sources.